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Ugg, don't ask me why but suddenly I had the strong urge to pick Awakening back up last night. I started a game on Hard Classic, which is kind of a new thing for me since I usually play these games on Casual. Umm, hard is really hard. I kept losing heroes and having to reset (usually Sully or Vaike... Jesus, could you two get some defense??).

Only got to the Regna Ferox snow chapter before I had to give up cuz it was late and I was sick of restarting. I'll have to try harder tho. Hard seems to require pairing up which is unfortunate. Also turtling. I'm seeing why people dislike Awakening map design tho. No choke points and suddenly you have like 4 risen that can enemy phase your same guy.

I wonder if I should have given Robin a Magic boon instead of Speed tho. She refuses to level it. I guess Speed will be good in the long run. Was tempted to go with canon appearance Robin but I just couldn't bare to not use the older model with rockin' lavender hair and a bitchin' ponytail She looks nice. I at least kept her canon voice If you squint it's close enough to canon Robin Moreso than my short hair original one with older sounding voice

Edit: There, I unlocked Outrealm. DLC cheese here I come :3 Mostly just for money I think because it's like, when a spotpass guy has a Hammerne staff for sale, how do you not buy that?

Welp, I have fallen down the Awakening taguel hole. I spent a ton of time playing it now. I hope this doesn't turn into another game I abandon mid-way through (I still really really want to finish Sacred Stones, I swear! And Echoes!) I got up to the chapter where you get Tharja and Libra and then decided I wanted to grind and do other stuff because I remember that one being kinda sorta hard (and I imagine hard mode is harder). Donnel has ascended into godhood currently. He is a Hero and basically takes no damage from anything. He actually dodges most attacks - his avoid is crazy. Robin also does insane damage with her magiks. I'm debating if I just wanna start promoting dudes now or if I should get them to 20 first. I may at least try for 15 for the second skill.

I also started buying some of the DLC I originally skipped (which was actually all of it other than the free DLC when the game launched). I bought the holiday pack because I've always wanted to try those, and the Smash Brethren one because waifu class I only tried the Harvest Scramble one from the holiday pack so far - fuck Counter, basically. I actually didn't like it because of that bullshit skill on half of the Risen there (the other half had Vengeance so hope you one-shot them or they will kill you on enemy phase... almost all of them had Pass too). I tried Smash Brethren 1 but it seems built for waaaaaaay stronger units than I have. Robin and Donnel were the only ones that could do stuff. Still, the map was super cool - they actually bothered to model the Dragon's Gate from Blazing Blade. That's awesome. This is shit I never would have appreciated when I originally played the game but now it's like, I know who all these characters are, this is awesome! Though jesus, Nephanee does NOT belong in Awakening's ugly ass armor... Also I find it ironic that because of the poor way Awakening makes the models for these heroes (basically taking existing models and re-coloring hair and such), they outright spoil who the Black Knight is, since when you zoom in on him, you see him without a helmet (and it's easy enough to guess based on hair color if you know the characters of Radiant Dawn).

Still trying to decide on pairings. My goal this time around, unlike the first time I played where I used a guide and shit, is not to go for optimal pairings, but go for ones that are fun or make sense to me from a story perspective. I did Chrom and Robin of course (I feel like this is required because it's so good, even though the game canonically seems to want to pair him with Sumia). I decided to do Gregor and Nowi because they have a fun dynamic. And I went Sully and Stahl because this time around I actually know what Christmas Cavaliers are :3 That was a pretty sweet support too - they compare themselves to Cain and Abel :3 I think I'm gonna do Ricken and Maribelle since this is one of the few people she doesn't seem to bitch at, but that support is taking forever. I think I might go Donny and Cordelia since so far the support has been pretty sweet (I like that Donnel thinks "you have a big nose" is a compliment :3)

Hard mode is still kinda bullshit. I think I get why hardcore FE fans don't like this game now. There are definitely some serious map issues that just lead you to be completely overrun with enemies from all sides. There's no chokepoints or defensive terrain. I've had to restart so many times because I didn't turtle like mad. It's hard to give my weaker guys xp because if they get exposed they just kinda die. Hence why I have been abusing DLC The game seems to want you to grind, which is a shame. Still love it though.

That said the hardest difficulty is super bullshit unless you cheese it.

That's what I've heard. I've heard it's basically "grind Frederick/Robin mode." Speaking of which, my Frederick actually sucks right now which is making me sad. I dunno if I just didn't let him get a lot of XP or what but he's only level 4 and he's really starting to feel it now. Especially against magic, holy crap. I need to find a good way to grind some levels on him...

Ha, so I've been playing through Awakening still (surprised I have been sticking with it). Up to smacking Walhart in the face I believe. But then last night I got the urge to go back to Echoes, so I did that. I have always been close to the end of that game and it's been harder and harder to avoid spoilers. So I might just brute force myself to finish it.

Apparently I was already really close to finishing Alm's act 4 path (or at least as far as it'll let me go) because one map in (the Zeke map) I got to a part where there was some kind of earthquake that blocked off the rest of it and now there's just a tile with endless necrodragons (which I grinded a little bit I wonder if they drop dragon scales... I wanna make that dracoshield!). Went back to Celica and I apparently didn't do the last two maps (I thought it was only one I had not finished). Earthquake guy map was crap - Atlas archer MVP at snipin' those stupid mages. Then I got a game over in the stupid Duma Tower so I called it for the night (I think I lost ALL my progress... ugg). Really don't like the dungeons in that game too much. Very tedious (and bad controls, the camera whipping around makes me dizzy). Also I need to figure out a way to deal with those stupid undead armor knight guys because almost nothing hurts them. Just holy magic or like really powerful spells like Sagittae (which then leaves my mages/priests at like half health from the mana cost -_-). I honestly might grind a bit to get everyone up to tier 3. Or at least make my pegasus knights suck less (Est is seriously the worst jesus). Debating if I should grind money too - I was getting a shitton of silver pieces in duma tower.

Edit: Oh boo, some classes only have a third tier promotion with DLC? Hmmmmm....

I stalled out on Shadows when I got to the Celica map that is just all swamp tiles with a super strong magic user boss who just camps out in the middle of the swamp.

The movement speed penalty and damage every turn was just kinda frustrating, I've been slogging my way through swamp maps for like three stages now on her campaign but at least those had areas that let you work around it.

Welp, after like what, 2 years(?) I've finally beaten Echoes. Holy shit what an awesome ending. I wish some of the plot points hadn't been spoiled for me (god damn you Cipher and your Berkut cards...) but there was still some cool surprises left. Also holy shit the ending music (during all the "Where are they now" things Fire Emblem always does). Also weird the parallels between Duma and Anankos in Fates. Wonder if that was intentional (I'm gonna have to look up his Gaiden design to see if it changed significantly).

Still debating if I'll bother with the endgame stuff. Unfortunately I've had it completely spoiled for me so it's less exciting of a prospect.

Welp, I have fallen down the Awakening taguel hole. I spent a ton of time playing it now. I hope this doesn't turn into another game I abandon mid-way through (I still really really want to finish Sacred Stones, I swear! And Echoes!) I got up to the chapter where you get Tharja and Libra and then decided I wanted to grind and do other stuff because I remember that one being kinda sorta hard (and I imagine hard mode is harder). Donnel has ascended into godhood currently. He is a Hero and basically takes no damage from anything. He actually dodges most attacks - his avoid is crazy. Robin also does insane damage with her magiks. I'm debating if I just wanna start promoting dudes now or if I should get them to 20 first. I may at least try for 15 for the second skill.

I also started buying some of the DLC I originally skipped (which was actually all of it other than the free DLC when the game launched). I bought the holiday pack because I've always wanted to try those, and the Smash Brethren one because waifu class I only tried the Harvest Scramble one from the holiday pack so far - fuck Counter, basically. I actually didn't like it because of that bullshit skill on half of the Risen there (the other half had Vengeance so hope you one-shot them or they will kill you on enemy phase... almost all of them had Pass too). I tried Smash Brethren 1 but it seems built for waaaaaaay stronger units than I have. Robin and Donnel were the only ones that could do stuff. Still, the map was super cool - they actually bothered to model the Dragon's Gate from Blazing Blade. That's awesome. This is shit I never would have appreciated when I originally played the game but now it's like, I know who all these characters are, this is awesome! Though jesus, Nephanee does NOT belong in Awakening's ugly ass armor... Also I find it ironic that because of the poor way Awakening makes the models for these heroes (basically taking existing models and re-coloring hair and such), they outright spoil who the Black Knight is, since when you zoom in on him, you see him without a helmet (and it's easy enough to guess based on hair color if you know the characters of Radiant Dawn).

Still trying to decide on pairings. My goal this time around, unlike the first time I played where I used a guide and shit, is not to go for optimal pairings, but go for ones that are fun or make sense to me from a story perspective. I did Chrom and Robin of course (I feel like this is required because it's so good, even though the game canonically seems to want to pair him with Sumia). I decided to do Gregor and Nowi because they have a fun dynamic. And I went Sully and Stahl because this time around I actually know what Christmas Cavaliers are :3 That was a pretty sweet support too - they compare themselves to Cain and Abel :3 I think I'm gonna do Ricken and Maribelle since this is one of the few people she doesn't seem to bitch at, but that support is taking forever. I think I might go Donny and Cordelia since so far the support has been pretty sweet (I like that Donnel thinks "you have a big nose" is a compliment :3)

Hard mode is still kinda bullshit. I think I get why hardcore FE fans don't like this game now. There are definitely some serious map issues that just lead you to be completely overrun with enemies from all sides. There's no chokepoints or defensive terrain. I've had to restart so many times because I didn't turtle like mad. It's hard to give my weaker guys xp because if they get exposed they just kinda die. Hence why I have been abusing DLC The game seems to want you to grind, which is a shame. Still love it though.

Absolutely get to at least 15- the skills are what really bust the game open in the latter half.

Yeah I swapped back to Awakening after beating Echoes so a lot of my time has been spent training up guys. Which is kinda sad because I know it's overkill, but it's fun to make these sick, broken units haha... Current goal is to get Lissa up to be a lvl 15 Dark Flier so Owain can be broken as shit. The sad thing is I don't even need the children units because my adults are so fucking busted as is. Robin and Donnel are literally unkillable gods. Donnel actually stopped getting stats on level up because he's capped everything now. I don't really have any skills I wanna give him so I may just leave him as a Warrior. Robin I re-classed back to Dark Flier after a brief trip through Dark Knight territory to get that lifetaker skill (or whatever it's called). She basically one shots everything with her spells and then Galeforces and kills something else.

I legit don't know what to do with Frederick tho. He's sooooo bad. I don't know how this happened but he dies to everything now. Even Lucina is pretty bad. I had to spend some side time leveling her up in the XP DLC map because she was getting destroyed on that story mission where you fight Walhart. Honestly may drop Frederick once I get him to a place I feel I can do the stupid Gerome mission (tho I hate Gerome ). Maybe I should just give up, Cherche seems incapable of becoming a Dark Flier? I can probably just dump Luna on him or something and be satisfied.

Honestly I should probably just continue with the story since I'm at the end game pretty much. At least to the point I unlock all the weirdo side quasi-DLC missions to recruit the rando characters like Gangrel and Emerynn and crap. But at the same time I see all those green paralogue missions just sitting there and it irks me, but I don't wanna do them until I have good inheritance fodder for the children... bleh... It's sad but I've only actually gotten Morgan and Severa so far (just finally did Severa last night... she's so weak compared to her busted parents.. haha... but I gave her Donny's +20% growth skill so she can be busted too)

P.S. - God I forgot how busted Astra is in this game. Lon'qu was so underleveled but now he's starting to get to face melting territory thanks to that skill.

Side note, I'm loving the kinda dumb DLC where they dump a bunch of characters from old Fire Emblem games in battles against each other. It's so cheesy and a lot of the unit choices are a bit wonky, but the dialog is fantastic. I love seeing interactions between the Awakening cast and the old heroes, especially when they have a random Talk command. Like, I had Donnel fight Nephenee and there was a special conversation where she refused to speak to him and he couldn't understand why, but it was clearly because she was embarrassed that his manner of speaking reminded her of herself. Or there's one where Maribelle compliments Lachesis on her manners and asks who her etiquette instructor was. There's so many cool things like that, I love it.

Also while I realize the outrealm stuff isn't technically canon, it's super weird to me that there's constant references about how Chrom, etc *know* these characters from "history." I gotta think this is just hand-wavy writing but I mean, how the fuck do they know anyone other than Archanea and Velentia cast? Then again, Owain says "Great Ike's ghost" *not* in an outrealm mission but his own recruitment mission, so I guess Awakening just plays hard and fast with the rules...

I broke down and ordered a copy of Fire Emblem 6 with the english fan translation off ebay. Gonna have to go dig out my old school DS to play it, but kind of excited :3

Also been slacking and not playing Awakening. I need to finish it up - I literally only have Grima left to beat. Finally recruited the last of the children this last weekend. At some point I need to get back to Sacred Stones too. I swear I have the worst attention span at sticking to one game

There, beat Awakening finally last night (again ). It's interesting reading through some of those epilogue "Where are they now?" captions at the end because I noticed a couple seemed to be very custom made while others were "X did this thing, and his wife was also there." Like Sully and Stahl's specifically reference the red and green cavaliers which was pretty awesome. Kind of makes me wonder if there are more "canon" couples like that (which is to say, couples that actually got some custom writing for them like that). Also having watched a few other let's plays recently I gotta say these were a bit cheerier than a lot of the other epilogue things in past games. Really surprised how many have "No one remembers X character, their deeds have been lost to history" type of sad endings. Only a couple of those here, mostly for the DLC spotpass characters who I was honestly amazed had custom ending dialog both during the last mission and for this thing.

After that picked Sacred Stones back up and beat another chapter. Man, fuck Ewin. What a terrible character. How do you do ONE DAMAGE to things in your recruitment chapter? That's not an Est, that's a damn waste of time... I went to the house to recruit him and he literally died the next turn because he was one shot by the monsters (the ones that literally did 0 damage to my pegasus knights).... At least I could USE Ross (and he's friggin awesome now). Welp, enjoy your spot on the bench buddy. I'm also torn on Saleh because he seems pretty good but I dunno if I have enough slots to bring him. I'm already investing in Lute (who is admittedly slightly behind him BUT unpromoted). Also he seems like a boring character Having the same issues with wanting to bring Natasha and L'Arachel - my Natasha has been getting some amazing level ups so I don't wanna bench her just because she doesn't come with a mount. Stupid low deployment slots... grr...

Then I ran out of gear and wanted to shop on the overworld map but was forced to fight monsters, at which point I stupidly accidentally got Lute killed with the skirmish map almost clear so I said fuck it and quit for the night (rip some good level ups too, grrr).

P.S. - Artur, could you level some defense bud? Like just a couple points? You're the only one in that chapter taking like 20 damage from things. At least you don't completely fold like tissue paper and hit for no damage like Ewin. I still can't tell if Artur is a good character, but his light magic *seems* good against monsters... it's also super accurate... I dunno...

Though stupid me, I thought the original DS used the same charger as 3DS. It does not Not sure where mine is, so ordered a new one. So we'll see how long my DS holds out

Edit: Got to chapter 4 before deciding to quit for tonight. So dang fun though. Man this game chews through weapon uses though! I bought 5 each of iron swords, iron lances and javelins in Chapter 2 and I'm thinking it won't be enough... Oh well, should be another shop soon enough.

Though stupid me, I thought the original DS used the same charger as 3DS. It does not Not sure where mine is, so ordered a new one. So we'll see how long my DS holds out

Edit: Got to chapter 4 before deciding to quit for tonight. So dang fun though. Man this game chews through weapon uses though! I bought 5 each of iron swords, iron lances and javelins in Chapter 2 and I'm thinking it won't be enough... Oh well, should be another shop soon enough.

Also Lance is friggin' great.

If you've only played the post-Blazing Blade games, going back to the earlier ones can be pretty rough. Everyone's growth rates fucking suck.

The most annoying thing about Binding Blade specifically though is that you can't use promotion and stat boosting items in your base - you have to put them in your unit's inventory and use them during a mission. There's a lot of quality of life stuff like that that was smoothed out for Blazing Blade.

Though stupid me, I thought the original DS used the same charger as 3DS. It does not Not sure where mine is, so ordered a new one. So we'll see how long my DS holds out

Edit: Got to chapter 4 before deciding to quit for tonight. So dang fun though. Man this game chews through weapon uses though! I bought 5 each of iron swords, iron lances and javelins in Chapter 2 and I'm thinking it won't be enough... Oh well, should be another shop soon enough.

Also Lance is friggin' great.

If you've only played the post-Blazing Blade games, going back to the earlier ones can be pretty rough. Everyone's growth rates fucking suck.

The most annoying thing about Binding Blade specifically though is that you can't use promotion and stat boosting items in your base - you have to put them in your unit's inventory and use them during a mission. There's a lot of quality of life stuff like that that was smoothed out for Blazing Blade.

Yeah I've watched a let's play of it, so I kinda know what to expect. I know it's a bit janky in places but that's ok. I have a gaiden chapter guide handy so I don't fuck that up. And I think I kinda know how to recruit everyone from the let's play. Gonna shoot for the Ilia chapters I think...

It feels real weird playing a GBA game on actual hardware again though haha... I wish DS wasn't so jank itself - I really really want a brightness setting. And I'm so used to the 3DS XL screen size that everything feels so friggin tiny to me But it plays pretty great so good enough (I mean, my alternative is to find my old GBA SP which I guarantee would be way worse )

Though stupid me, I thought the original DS used the same charger as 3DS. It does not Not sure where mine is, so ordered a new one. So we'll see how long my DS holds out

Edit: Got to chapter 4 before deciding to quit for tonight. So dang fun though. Man this game chews through weapon uses though! I bought 5 each of iron swords, iron lances and javelins in Chapter 2 and I'm thinking it won't be enough... Oh well, should be another shop soon enough.

Also Lance is friggin' great.

If you've only played the post-Blazing Blade games, going back to the earlier ones can be pretty rough. Everyone's growth rates fucking suck.

The most annoying thing about Binding Blade specifically though is that you can't use promotion and stat boosting items in your base - you have to put them in your unit's inventory and use them during a mission. There's a lot of quality of life stuff like that that was smoothed out for Blazing Blade.

Yeah I've watched a let's play of it, so I kinda know what to expect. I know it's a bit janky in places but that's ok. I have a gaiden chapter guide handy so I don't fuck that up. And I think I kinda know how to recruit everyone from the let's play. Gonna shoot for the Ilia chapters I think...

It feels real weird playing a GBA game on actual hardware again though haha... I wish DS wasn't so jank itself - I really really want a brightness setting. And I'm so used to the 3DS XL screen size that everything feels so friggin tiny to me But it plays pretty great so good enough (I mean, my alternative is to find my old GBA SP which I guarantee would be way worse )

Most of the gaiden unlock and character recruitment criteria are fairly straightforward, but a couple of them are a bit hard to figure out, so it's probably a smart idea to use a guide for them.

I'm kind of amused the trailer showed Edelgard getting a certificate allowing her to become a Brigand (instead of any other possible Class). Somehow I suspect most real Imperial Heirs weren't educated at a prestigious academy in the art of brigandage.

I'm kind of amused the trailer showed Edelgard getting a certificate allowing her to become a Brigand (instead of any other possible Class). Somehow I suspect most real Imperial Heirs weren't educated at a prestigious academy in the art of brigandage.

What I'm kind of suspecting is that it may be like a Fire Emblem 7 thing where you had Eliwood mode and Hector mode and they were both slightly different but otherwise shared a lot of maps and stuff. So maybe it will be technically 3 games, but less extreme than Fates.

Also see a lot of people worried about Harry Potter emblem or whatever but my gut feeling is that the school stuff is not as significant as they made it look in the direct. I get the feeling it might be sort of like a combination of the Fates castle and maybe something like the Greil Mercenaries HQ. Sort of a base but also the launching point for the story (unlike Fates that just kind of forgot timespace existed about five minutes after it was introduced).

It feels like all the stuff they showed is just window dressing for features we've had in the past. Like the dinning hall seems kinda like the Fates cooking stuff mixed with support stuff. The exams seems to just be fancy class changes. Lesson plans are like a new way to build weapon ranks, etc.

Edit: Random side note, I'm watching the thing again. So is it me, or is dragon girl Lissa from Awakening and the narrator Slayde from Echoes? (Or maybe Saber)

If they stick with the Potter theme, the school stuff will be one part of the game before a big bad shows up and starts a massive war forcing the students to go to their respective homes and perhaps face each other on the field of battle.

Yeah, I expect that there's a few missions before the school part based on the setup in the direct. Then about half the game in the school, before things all go to hell.

Now, if I could flesh everything out from here? Evil plotters in each kingdom (to some degree, maybe only highly placed in one, enough to orchestrate things), the various school missions hint at intrigue leading up to the war breaking out again. And students feeling torn loyalties, etc. Whatever house you pick, all those people will stick with you anyways. People in the other houses will go home to fight for their homeland, unless they have high support ranks with someone in another house. Possibly the two lords go home anyways, and only rejoin at endgame when the real big bad is revealed. And then the school becomes your base of operations to try and prevent the war escalating while chasing down the conspiracies (as the knights of whatever are basically a fourth faction tasked with keeping war from breaking back out), until the country with the mastermind attacks, and then the mastermind uses ancient evil to force you out. Then you get the final revelations about MC's history and some divine weapon or whatever and go to endgame, with a side of making the three nations make up to all face the real ancient evil.

When you beat the game, you get the credits roll and support endings, and then get to do a postgame twenty years later, MC is retired from the frontlines and still teaching, and the new class is kids from everyone who married. And basically just exists to go smack down enemies with OP kid units, run some challenge maps (ooh look plot-irrelevant ancient ruins with monsters), etc. Some side quest lines to flesh out the new state of the world and basically be a victory lap from the main campaign.